Nature’s grandeur is a perennial source of inspiration for all manner of creative minds, not least fashion designers. (“Florals for spring? Groundbreaking.” Etc.). Among them this season was Rory William Docherty, a London Fashion Week debutant who, fitting for the occasion, took to a stained glass-domed, colonnade-flanked ballroom to present his latest collection for his namesake brand.
The resplendence and delirium of an English summer, or the poetic gesture of offering someone a bunch of flowers has been a common theme this season. What made Docherty’s proposal feel distinct, though, was the far-flung source of his inspiration—he is from and based in Aotearoa (aka New Zealand), a country globally renowned as a place where nature’s glory reveals itself at its most sublime.
Taking drawings and paintings produced on a post-collection camping trip in his homeland’s primordial, LOTR landscapes as his point of departure, the collection was a refined harmony of “the practical and the poetic,” Docherty said. There was an elegant slouchiness to the silhouettes that almost made them feel like they could have been costumes for some unknown fairytale, with a simultaneously contemporary and historic flair, volleying between slumpy organic forms and sharply cut shapes.
A wide-set trench coat with an exaggerated sailor collar was hand-painted with gestural brushstrokes, evoking the woozy dance of sea grasses beneath calm waves; asymmetrically-hemmed skirts in sandy taupes echoed the craggy beaches on which the water laps. Glossy black ‘pebbles’ were globbed onto a boxy, green tweed jacket constructed with plunging peak lapels, while patchy prints in new-shoot greens and scorched earth reds were splashed across tailored separates and column dresses with asymmetrical necklines, bringing the designer’s homeland to life.
Seen bleary-eyed on a Monday morning after a busy weekend, this was one of those collections that delivered a grounding, uplifting sense of calm—the sort that is probably the body’s default response to beholding Aotearoa’s natural beauty first-hand.
